Josh, Chuck, and producer Jerry kick things off with some self-deprecating lore of their own: a pattern of TV cancellations that followed Stuff You Should Know appearances, including shows hosted by Soledad O'Brien and Jeff Probst. Chuck draws a crucial distinction between 'canceled' and 'not renewed' — a nod to their own TV show's fate. Josh frames the episode as an anthropological look at curses, not a supernatural endorsement, and sets listener expectations: a lot of this is legend, fact-checking is tricky, and the point is the folklore itself.

The Abenaki, an Algonquin-speaking tribe who had called Brunswick, Vermont home for roughly 12,000 years, considered the six-spring site a place of sacred healing. During the French and Indian War, the springs reportedly cured a wounded French soldier — who later returned to exploit them for profit. That betrayal, according to legend, triggered a curse that any who tried to profit from the springs would be doomed. A resort was eventually built in the 1860s, its brochure cheekily referencing 'medicine waters from the Great Spirit' ^{[1] "The Abenaki tribe considered Brunswick Springs sacred for 12,000 years. Every entrepreneur who tried to commercialize the site met the same…" 02:43 Play} — and initially thrived before the curse seemingly caught up. In 1894, a dentist's expanded resort burned. John Hutchins rebuilt in 1929, only to watch it burn, then rebuilt again, and watched those burn in 1930 and 1931. Since then, no one has tried again — and recently the Abenaki bought the land back and transferred it to a Vermont state trust, ensuring it will never be developed.

The story of Atuk begins innocuously enough: a witty Canadian satirical novel gets optioned, Americanized, and passed around Hollywood for years. Then the deaths begin. John Belushi fell in love with the script in 1982 and died of a drug overdose before production could start. Sam Kinison signed on in 1988, got 8 days into filming before imploding in a lawsuit with the studio, and died in a car crash in 1992. John Candy and screenwriter Michael O'Donoghue both died in 1994, the same year they teamed up on the project ^{[1] "Five of comedy's biggest names — John Belushi, Sam Kinison, John Candy, Chris Farley, and Phil Hartman — all died after separately being at…" 08:50 Play} . Chris Farley took it on in 1997 with his pal Phil Hartman, and both of them died within the following year. Josh and Chuck note that other killer scripts, like A Confederacy of Dunces, share some of the same names — which complicates the Atuk-specific theory, but doesn't entirely defuse the eeriness.

A comedic ad break in which a Carvana spokesperson touts selling a car on the platform as an easily won financial win, contrasting it with a lottery scratcher's uncertain payoff. The segment ends with the tagline 'inexplicably good offers worth bragging about.'

Timur the Lame — later anglicized to Tamerlane — was a 14th-century Mongol conqueror who killed an estimated 17 million people, roughly 5% of the world's population at the time ^{[1] — Josh "Tamerlane's conquests are estimated to have killed 17 million people — roughly 5% of the entire world population at the time. He sacked Mos…" 20:10 Play} . He sacked cities from Moscow to Delhi and left behind the ornate Timurid architectural style in Samarkand. His tomb sat undisturbed for 500 years until Stalin, in a display of imperial flex, ordered Soviet forensic specialist Mikhail Gerasimov to exhume the body. Two days later, on June 22, 1941, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa — the largest land invasion in history, with nearly 4 million troops. Stalin reportedly had Tamerlane re-interred around the time the Battle of Stalingrad turned the war's tide. But here's the kicker: the famous inscription warning of a greater conqueror being unleashed was almost certainly invented by a Russian documentary in 2003. Soviet scholars had already transcribed every real tomb inscription — no curse was among them.

Game 4 of the 1945 World Series was chilly, the Cubs were playing the Tigers, and William Sianis arrived with his legally adopted goat Murphy wearing a blanket and a sign reading 'We got Detroit's goat.' The gate attendant said no. Philip Wrigley himself said no — because, simply, 'the goat stinks.' Sianis cursed the Cubs right there and then: no World Series as long as the goat wasn't welcome ^{[1] "On October 6, 1945, Chicago bar owner William Sianis tried to bring his beloved goat Murphy to Game 4 of the World Series at Wrigley Field.…" 28:30 Play} . They lost the Series to Detroit that year. Over the following 57 years they had only 15 winning seasons and zero World Series appearances. Decades of attempted curse-lifting saw Murphy's descendants brought to Wrigley in a white limousine in 1973 — only to be turned away again. But every one of the Cubs' four postseason appearances between 1945 and 2016 came in a year a goat descendant visited ^{[2] — Josh "All 4 Cubs postseason runs followed goat visits: All four of the Cubs' postseason appearances between 1945 and 2016 (in 1984, 1989, 1998, a…" 36:15 Play} . Finally, in 2016, Sam Sianis rang the Trocani Bell worn by Murphy at the 1945 Series during the tension of extra innings in Game 7. The Cubs won.

Jackie Chan became a massive star in China in the 1980s and a household name in the West with Rumble in the Bronx in 1995. His enormous fame made him a natural pitchman for dozens of Chinese brands — and many of those brands met unfortunate ends. The Sannier Frozen Dumpling Company discovered staph in its products. A VCD company's CEO went to jail for fraud. An endorsed air conditioner unit exploded. Fen Wang Cola fizzled out entirely. A children's learning computer — the Subor Learning Machine — flopped. Josh and Chuck are fair-minded enough to note that Chan endorsed so many products that statistical failure is expected — but the curse narrative leaped from boardrooms to tennis courts at the 2025 Australian Open, where finalists Aryna Sabalenka, Alexander Zverev, and Jelena Ostapenko all lost their matches after meeting and shaking Chan's hand ^{[1] "Jackie Chan has endorsed so many products in China that statistically, some had to fail — but the pattern is striking. A frozen dumpling co…" 41:20 Play} .

Brett writes in to connect the show's earlier Tippi Hedren episode (about Vietnamese nail salons) to a documentary called 'The Donut King.' The film profiles a Cambodian immigrant who opened a donut shop, then leveraged it as a legal mechanism to sponsor other Cambodian families fleeing the Pol Pot regime, training them to open their own shops. The man ultimately built a sprawling West Coast donut empire, helping dozens or potentially hundreds of families immigrate. Brett notes the documentary is honest about its subject's flaws, and suggests it as a Short Stuff candidate. Josh and Chuck are clearly charmed by the story.

The episode closes with listener mail contact details — [email protected] — and a reminder that Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, and wherever listeners get their shows. A second Carvana sponsor read plays out with the same comedic framing as the mid-episode spot, closing with 'pickup fees may apply' and the 'Guaranteed Human' iHeart podcast stamp.